Chapter 98
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 98
Marmolia didn't slow, determined to smash straight through the spell.
As she entered the freezing zone, she reached out. Frost coated her melting skin as her movements stiffened. Shards of ice slashed at her flesh.
But Marmolia had no intention of stopping. She dragged her ruined body forward, her hand reaching for Melju.
‘What…!’
A small magic circle materialized on her palm as she broke through the ice, aiming directly at Melju.
Intermediate Magic, <Flower of Assassination>.
Sharp thorns erupted from Marmolia's hand, shooting toward Melju's abdomen.
Sensing the danger, Melju canceled her spell and threw herself backward, narrowly dodging the attack.
Seizing the opening, Marmolia closed the distance and swung her arm.
“—!!”
Before a scream could escape her lips, Melju was sent flying dozens of meters. She tumbled across the ground, crashing hard as a mouthful of blood spilled from her lips.
“Gahk.”
While Melju struggled to regain her footing, Marmolia leaped dozens of meters in a single bound, landing right in front of her.
She landed on all fours, looking less like a Demon King and more like a feral beast.
“Ka, ga, aaaagh.”
[It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,]
The telepathic message echoed in Melju's head once more.
Marmolia seized Melju by the throat, hoisting her into the air and squeezing the life from her.
Melju gasped, choking in agony.
[It's... going to... hurt. Ha, haha-ack.]
As Marmolia's mana gathered in the hand crushing her neck, Melju managed to touch the tip of her staff to Marmolia's elbow.
<Mana Explosion>.
Boom! With a deafening roar, an explosion erupted from the point of contact.
Blasted free from the grip, Melju hastily teleported away.
Only then did she clutch her throat, panting heavily. Tears stung her eyes as the reality of her near-death experience washed over her.
Marmolia stared at her arm, the joint utterly destroyed by the internal explosion. The site of the blast was a mangled mess.
Her ruined elbow finally gave way, dropping to the floor in a mess of dripping flesh.
“Kiaaaaaaaaagh!!”
A torrent of screams tore from her throat.
Even without the telepathic link, the message was clear: she was in agony. Her body may have been a ruined, melting wreck, but the pain was all too real.
“Haah, haah.”
Finally able to breathe, Melju watched Marmolia and quickly deployed her defensive veils.
‘More… I have to be more careful.’
Marmolia's body was continuously melting. Melju's own mana was nearly depleted. She had to hold out. She had to win this war of attrition and survive.
She glanced at Marmolia in the distance. The Demon King, who had just been howling in pain, had already regenerated a new arm.
This time, the bubbling flesh had fused into a grotesque scythe.
The moment regeneration was complete, Marmolia launched herself forward. The scythe slammed down onto the veils with the full weight of her body behind it.
Clang!
The impacts rang out again and again.
Several layers of the veil shattered instantly under the heavy blows. Only the final barrier remained, flickering as it struggled to hold. Melju poured every last drop of accessible mana into maintaining it.
On the other side of the translucent barrier, Marmolia's hideous face was a mask of death. With every strike of her scythe, she unleashed a scream that hungered for Melju's throat.
‘Somehow… I have to hold out, no matter what.’
Even as she told herself this, Melju knew the truth. She wanted to survive more than anything, but she knew better.
Strength and skill decided battles. Willpower was a distant, almost irrelevant, third.
After all, the humans who had invaded the Demon King Castle in the past hadn't lost for lack of willpower.
They died because they were weak.
It was the same now. Her will to endure would have no effect on the outcome.
‘My mana…’
…She had no mana left.
The veil shattered, and the scythe tore straight into Melju's flesh.
Blood splattered.
Before the pain could fully register, Marmolia ripped the scythe free and plunged it into Melju's arm. Again, she tore it out. The weapon, now drenched in Melju's blood, sprayed crimson droplets everywhere.
Again and again. Endlessly. The assault was wretched.
After stabbing her five or six times, Marmolia raised her scythe high.
She was aiming for Melju's neck.
Her own body's collapse was accelerating; she was clearly eager to end this.
“Ga, aaaaagh.”
A monstrous shriek echoed in the air and in Melju's mind, followed by a telepathic message filled with nothing but laughter. What was so amusing? Even in her agony, Marmolia was reveling in pure madness.
The question of why she hated Melju was long forgotten. All that remained was the need to kill. No other reason mattered. Only raw instinct ruled her melting body.
“Gaaaaagh!!”
With an ear-splitting screech, the scythe fell toward Melju's neck like a guillotine.
“……Ah.”
Her body ravaged, Melju watched the descending scythe through fading vision.
As her consciousness slipped away, Melju gathered the last dregs of her mana and unleashed one final spell.
Intermediate Magic, <Sylphid's Rejection>.
Just before the blade could sever her neck, a violent gale erupted. It was a mediocre spell, highly inefficient even for intermediate magic, but Marmolia's melting body was more vulnerable than ever.
The sudden blast of compressed wind sent Marmolia flying backward. She crashed to the ground over ten meters away.
Marmolia shrieked as she tried to stand, the impact flaring her pain anew. Still, she hadn't taken any significant damage. <Sylphid's Rejection> was a spell designed only to repel, not to harm. The fall had done little more than knock her on her back.
While Marmolia was getting up, Melju coughed up another mouthful of blood.
She had bought herself a few seconds, but it was futile. In her current state, she could do nothing. Her veils had barely saved her from decapitation, but she was already critically wounded.
She had lost too much blood. Her mind grew hazy. Not a single drop of mana remained. As her life drained away, a severe chill washed over her, and her body began to shiver violently.
This feeling—standing on the threshold of death—was not entirely unfamiliar.
Sinking into an abyss, Melju thought back.
When had this happened before?
Even when defending the Demon King Castle from humans, she had crossed the boundary between life and death a few times.
Most recently… ah, it must have been when she was defending the teleportation hub in Riaze under Lord Swallow's orders.
…How did she survive back then?
Lord Swallow appeared, and she collapsed. And then…
“Ah…”
Now that the end was here, useless thoughts were flooding her mind.
Letting them go, Melju closed her eyes.
Death was a natural, common thing. Hers would be no different.
“……”
Or so it should have been.
A long time seemed to pass. But strangely, Melju de Limp Agrea did not die.
On the contrary, she was recovering.
Her mind cleared at a startling pace. The violent tremors wracking her body ceased. She, who had lost all control moments ago, could now move her fingers perfectly.
Not just her fingers—her entire body moved with ease. And her mana had returned.
In fact, she had more mana than usual. It overflowed to the point where she could barely control it, leaking out of her body.
But this mana wasn't hers. It was an alien presence, so foreign that just trying to sense it made her nauseous.
Melju recognized this mana.
However, she had no idea why it was embedded deep within her body.
‘…What on earth happened?’
With nothing making sense, Melju decided to first focus on her current state. She carefully examined her condition.
This black mana surging within her—Swallow's mana—was now her life force.
Perhaps it was a residue left over from when he had used <Cure> on her, now converted into life force.
…For now, that was the only explanation she could think of.
Of course, it was entirely a hypothesis. She had never heard of such a thing being possible. Normally, absorbing so much foreign mana would cause a person to explode. That was the very principle behind <Mana Explosion>—mana overload.
“……It doesn't matter anyway.”
Muttering to herself, Melju stood up and looked at Marmolia.
In the distance, Marmolia's screams died in her throat. She froze, staring at the perfectly healthy Melju. Her instincts couldn't comprehend what was happening.
A brief silence fell.
Kicking off the ground once more, Marmolia lunged at Melju at high speed.
“Kaaaaaaaagh!!”
Her scythe glowed crimson, a clear sign she intended to sever Melju's neck without a moment's hesitation.
In response, Melju raised her staff.
A pressure and anxiety several times greater than usual weighed on her. Could she properly control Swallow's black mana? If she couldn't, she would truly die. She didn't even know how the spell would manifest. If the mana backfired, she would explode long before Marmolia's scythe could reach her.
Even so, Melju began the incantation.
There was no time to use high-tier magic. She simply cast the best spell she could deploy in such a short window.
Intermediate Magic, <Frozen Spear>.
A magic circle of pure black mana blazed to life before her.
*
Silence hung over the Magic Tower Polaris.
Ar observed in silence, as always, but he lowered his head slightly, a shadow falling across his face.
“……”
The plan was going awry.
This was not part of the plan.
According to the plan, Marmolia was supposed to kill Melju. Then, when Swallow appeared, they would use Marmolia to gauge his strength and leverage the ‘Destroyed Knecht’ as a political tool.
That was how it should have gone. But now… why had Marmolia been defeated by a single spell of such absurd power?
“Sir Sturman… what do you think is the true nature of that power?” Ar asked.
Sturman replied with silence. He was one of those who had gone to the front lines with Ar to rescue Uin. He had seen Swallow in person and felt his mana firsthand.
Sturman's silence was his usual form of affirmation, confirming Ar's unspoken suspicion.
The mana in the spell Melju had just used was undoubtedly Swallow's.
—An ancient monster roaming a human village.
—A Demon King harboring that monster's mana.
Was this an unprecedented anomaly? Or had humanity simply failed to notice it until now?
“……Isn't there still quite some time left before Uin arrives?”
When Ar followed up with another question, Sturman maintained his silence once again.
Ar turned his gaze and directed his next question to the magic scholars of the ‘Third Eye’.
“How much longer does that test subject have to live?”
“We cannot know for certain, but she won't last long. Judging by the rate of collapse, probably less than five minutes…”
“Tell me how much time she has left to move properly.”
“……Two minutes.”
“So she has practically reached her limit.”
Ar's gaze returned to the battlefield, to the miserably collapsed homunculus. The scholars of the ‘Third Eye’ had called this creation the pinnacle of modern alchemy, and their confidence had not been a lie.
“It is the result of taking the exact opposite path of Niphrim.”
While traditional alchemy focused on gaining the most power with the fewest side effects, Marmolia was its dark reflection. She was the result of using every forbidden method to maximize power, embracing the catastrophic side effects—the dregs of failed research.
That was why even a Demon King's body, renowned for its resilience, couldn't withstand the collapse and was melting away.
To accurately gauge Swallow's power, they needed something that could withstand his assault, even for a moment.
A creation built for that purpose couldn't be allowed to fall to a mere Demon King.
“This has become problematic,” Ar said.
His tone was completely at odds with his words. He described an urgent crisis, yet his voice was unnaturally calm.
The leader of ‘Polaris’, unable to read Ar's true intentions, began to ramble nervously. Ar ignored him, muttering to himself in a cold voice.
“……The order is different from what was originally planned, but…”
Then, as always, he plastered a fake smile onto his face.